We all need safe food and clean water.

Congress is poised to promote “open ocean aquaculture” by either reauthorizing an important fishing law with newly weakened protections against overfishing1, or furthering a Republican scheme in the Senate that eases the way for "industrial aquaculture" in federal waters. It’s another name for factory farming in the sea rather than on land. Factory farms are just as harmful in the ocean as they are in your community.

Industrial fish farms can wreak havoc on everything around them:

They pollute. Waste, excess food, antibiotics, and other chemicals used in factory fish farms spread to the ocean around them. This promotes algae growth and causes environmental damage.

They spread disease. Outbreaks of diseases and parasites at factory fish farms can be catastrophic. Earlier this year, a "sea lice epidemic" hit a fish farm in Canada, potentially impacting wild salmon in addition to farmed fish.2

The fish escape. Three million fish every year escape from aquaculture, pushing non-native species into the ecosystem.3

They think we aren’t paying attention as the summer winds down, and that this issue is too boring for people to care about.

But if allowed to continue, the plot in the Senate would make our food less safe and increase pollution in our oceans. It would disrupt the ecosystem in ways that could forever alter the balance of one of our most precious resources. It’s a lose-lose for the environment and our families, just to line the pockets of industrial fishing corporations (and the Big Ag corporations like Cargill who’d love to sell them massive amounts of soybeans as fish feed). This plan has to be stopped by committed people who care about our oceans more than money.

Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold & uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people’s health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.